← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
On the Brink
00:27:48
Insight, context and colour. Today, the barbs fly as Greece seems to be stumbling for...
Loading summary
Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
Kate Ady
You're about to hear from our own correspondent. We do two versions of the programme, one for the BBC World Service and this one's a download of the latest edition from BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:14]
Programme Host
Hello. Today, insults fly in the diplomatic rule books thrown out of the window as the Greek debt crisis intensifies. There's growing unease in Estonia as relations between Russia and the west deteriorate. Peru has plans for an ambitious transcontinental railway, but farmers in the high Andes are not impressed. And in the mouldering heart of a half destroyed city in the Middle east, we find the best ice cream we've ever tasted. Finance ministers from across the Eurozone will try again today to prevent Greece from defaulting on its debts and being forced out of this single currency. The country owes $320 billion and is fast running out of money. It will only get more if it agrees to implement the reforms demanded by its lenders. Yesterday, the bank of Greece said that failure to reach a deal would send Greece into a deep recession. There'd be dramatic drops in income levels and soaring unemployment. The negotiating team representing the creditors, the European Central bank, the IMF and the European Commission, want Greece to come up with new proposals to break the deadlock. But Chris Morris notes the rhetoric between all concerned is becoming increasingly heated.
- [01:28]
Chris Morris
Diplomacy, someone once said somewhere, is the art of thinking twice and then saying nothing. Well, that dull fudge you can hear in high offices of state across Europe at the moment is the sound of the rule book crashing to the ground after being thrown out of the window. No one appears to be thinking twice and no one is saying nothing. The barbs are flying thick and fast as Greece seems to be stumbling towards default. The Greeks accuse the IMF of criminal responsibility for their current plight. They say the rest of Europe is trying deliberately to humiliate them. The Europeans accuse the Greek government of lying to its people, of amateurism and double dealing. It's mendacious, they say, and it's playing with fire. A few officials in Brussels mutter darkly about a betrayal of trust. The diplomatic style of the President of the Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, usually involves a slap on the back and a kiss on the cheek. But even he seems to have lost his sense of humour when it comes to dealing with Greeks who are most emphatically not bearing gifts. How did it come to this? Well, five years of austerity and crisis in Greece have produced the deepest recession ever seen in a modern industrialized economy. And the depth of that recession, more than a quarter of the economy wiped out produced Syriza, the coalition of the radical left. It came to power at the beginning of this year determined to change an economic relationship it has described as servitude, reliant on loans to keep the economy afloat so that it could pay back the debts owed to the same people who were now lending it more money. And there was, I think, a working assumption in official corridors in Brussels that there would be some sound and fury, a few howls of protest, but eventually the Greeks would play ball because they would have no other choice. That meant they would have to do what previous governments had done, push through more reforms of the public sector, cut salaries and pensions, raise more money through taxation. But five months of tortuous negotiations later, and the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, says the toughest battles are just about to begin. So far, he hasn't blinked. We can't take any more, he says, and the Europeans have to look seriously at restructuring our debts. The last five months, it seems, have just been the warm up. The trouble is, time is fast running out. If all the predictions made in the past few weeks that Greece was running out of money had come true, the country would have gone bankrupt several times already. But there is a limit. And officials in Athens have emptied pockets and rummaged down the back of the national sofa looking for every last piece of spare change. There's not a lot left. So what would happen if Greece did finally empty the coffers and it was forced to default? The honest answer is no one can say for sure. But European politicians have been lining up to warn of looming catastrophe. Capital controls and a collapse of the banking system, a state of emergency and possible exit from the euro. In the short term, Greece's economic misery would almost certainly get worse. But Greek citizens are not the only ones with plenty still to lose. Because countries, governments and in the end, taxpayers in the eurozone, having bailed out the banks, the now own the vast majority of Greek debt. And if the radical leftists who hold power in Athens did walk away shouting a plague on all your European houses, the rest of the Eurozone would all be left with billions and in some cases, tens of billions of euros in unpaid debts. So however hard this is proving to be, all the main players still have an interest in compromise. Can they find one? Well, as I sit writing this in Brussels, ceremonies are taking place a few miles away in the rolling Belgian countryside, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington described his victory over Napoleon, a turning point in European History as the nearest run thing you ever saw. Today's European battles are thankfully fought on different terrain, but it would be wise to prepare for another very close shave.
- [05:57]
Programme Host
That's Chris Morris. Hundreds of mostly African migrants are this morning camped out in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, just along the coast from the glamorous beaches and hotels of the French Riviera. Under the Schengen Treaty, free cross border movement is usually allowed, but France has now tightened controls on immigrants, sending hundreds back into Italy. It's led to a diplomatic row between Paris and Rome. The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, discussed the issue with Prime Minister David Cameron in Rome yesterday. Lucy Williamson has been talking to the migrants in Ventimiglia, many of whom want to get through the border so they can travel on to northern Europe.
- [06:39]
Lucy Williamson
I'm halfway through recording a piece for the news when a voice cuts across my train of thought. That's a lie. I turn to the group of migrants hunkered down on the sea wall behind me. A lanky young man in a football shirt meets my gaze from under a red baseball cap and gestures restlessly. It's a lie, he repeats. What you were saying about food and water for migrants at the train station. It's a bait, a trick. I'd been explaining the ways in which this small Italian town was coping with its sudden influx of arrivals from Africa. People like Mustafa, who'd risked the journey from Sudan to reach Europe, but were now stuck 7 miles outside Ventimiglia at the border with France. With the gateway to Europe blocked, the local government has given the migrants floor space at the train station and provided food and water. But Mustafa was having none of it. The Italian police are planning something, he says. They want to reduce our numbers, to take us to Rome or somewhere. I trust them 0%. Instead, Mustafa is clinging to his rocks along with a hundred or so other migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and elsewhere. He's living on the grey boulders that line Italy's sweeping, palm fringed coastline where it meets France. At first light, the sleeping migrants are just bright spots nestled in between the crags, white sheets and thermal wraps catching the morning sun like human rock pools left by the sea. The Riviera's golden light, lush hillsides and pastel coloured houses draw some of the world's wealthiest tourists. Just along the coast are the playgrounds of Nice and Monaco. But Mustafa sleeps on the rocks in the open, within spitting distance of the waves that brought him here from Libya. I'm standing here hopeless, homeless, he says. Against the police, even defenceless, the presence of so many migrants at the border has prompted the Italian police to destroy several ad hoc camps on the other side of the road. Here, Mustafa watches the operation darkly. But for now, the rocks seem to be a safe zone. As long as the migrants there don't stray too far across the road, they're not targeted for eviction. Some of those being manhandled onto police buses manage to wriggle free and streak away to join the rock dwellers. Huge cheers go up whenever someone makes it across the road. It's like a bizarre and rather depressing game of British Bulldog, except with much higher stakes. The police don't dare target this side, Mustafa explains. The people here are ready to jump into the sea. We were ready to die when we came over it, and we're also ready to die now. One of his neighbours, Ibrahim, a quiet, thoughtful Sudanese guy, says his boat was left to drift at Sea for 10 days before they were rescued. They'd run out of food and water, he tells me. Now they've reached European shores, few want to stay in Italy. Mustafa has been here over a week and says he's already spent all his money on train tickets from Italy to Nice. It's pretty easy to get to Nice on the train, but also pretty easy for the French police to take you back, he says. They catch you and send you back to Ventimiglia. You start again at the station, buy a ticket, maybe get something to eat. Then it's a 20 minute train ride to Nice. They take you back again. You start again. Everyone here has tried that way, but they just lose their money. Now they're sitting here hopeless. These people, they're already dead. You see them moving, but inside they're dead. Why does he want so badly to go to France? I ask. I'm not going to France. He scoffs. France is nothing to me. I'm just going through it like everyone else here. I'm going to Sweden to meet my fiance. It turns out Mustafa is chasing love across the continent. His fiance, Aisha, left Libya four days before him in a different boat. He tried to argue with the smugglers to let them go together, but men and women had to travel separately. Don't worry, he was told. Europe is a democratic place. It'll be easy to find her. When I got to Italy, she was in Germany, he tells me. And when I got to the French border, someone told me she'd managed to get into Sweden. I know I can find her easily if I get there, but it's becoming a nightmare. I'm chasing her in fog. It's already been 20 days since the two love birds were parted. I asked Mustafa how they met. We met in Libya, he says, two months ago. I raise an eyebrow. He chuckles. Yeah, he says, we work fast.
- [11:24]
Programme Host
Lucy Williamson Invent Amelia. Relations between Russia and the west became a little bit colder this week. Moscow called an American proposal to deploy tanks and other heavy weapons in NATO countries along the Russian border the most aggressive step since the Cold War. Jeb Bush, who's hoping to follow his father and brother to the White House, has just been to the Baltic state of estonia. He called Mr. Putin a bully. Estonia was once a part of the Soviet Union, and its officials see the annexation of Crimea and fighting in Ukraine as clear signs of renewed Russian aggression. Neil Rosel has been to Estonia, where he found concerns about the loyalties of the country's own Russian minority.
- [12:10]
Neil Rosel
NATO has a Russian city. It's called Narva, and its main feature is a 12th century castle overlooking the Narva River. Climb to the top and you can peer down on its ancient nemesis, the fortress of Ivangorod that sprawls across the opposite bank. This spot has long been a place of conflict between east and West. Today, Ivangorod and its fortress are in Russia. Narva and its castle are in Estonia, which means they're in the EU and NATO. But Narva's people are almost entirely and often resolutely Russian. Note the Russian television channels on in seemingly every home lobby and restaurant. Note the statue of Lenin on the castle grounds and the Soviet tank on the stone plinth by the river and the crowd laying flowers by it on Victory Day, when Russians everywhere celebrate the Nazi defeat in 1945. A concert on that day last month featured a lot of flags. There were Russian ones with white, blue and red bars and Soviet ones with with a golden hammer, sickle and star set against a bright red background. But there was not one blue, black and white Estonian flag. They have their own traditions, one man told me. I even saw a flag used by the Russian rebels in Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Donetsk is a sister city to Narva, and the guy with its flag said its people needed support. They're being bombed right now, he told me. Good. What's happening in Donetsk happen here? I asked. It's very much possible. Estonia is somewhere out there, he said, gesturing to the West. We're on our own. The government only remembers us when it's election time. There's a history here. To liberate Narva from the Nazis, the Soviets bombed it flat. Then they moved in tens of thousands of Russian civilians to build or, as many Estonians see it, to occupy. Estonia only regained independence in 1991 with the collapse of communism. It has since had a sometimes awkward relationship with with its Russians, who make up a quarter of the total population. Some don't have equal citizenship or voting rights. The president once told the BBC there's no more reason to speak Russian in Estonia than Japanese or Urdu. For him even to speak Russian, he said, would legitimize 50 years of Soviet brutalization. So Russians don't always feel the warm embrace of the Estonian state. And it's not as if they're so busy getting rich that they don't notice. Narva has seen better days. The giant factories that once employed so many sit empty. Plants grow out of the rocks. An affable middle aged man named Slava Konovalov helped me slip into an abandoned textile mill where his mother used to work. He remembers the deafening noise of the place when he came to see her as a boy. Now the only sounds were our voices echoing around a vast courtyard, the crunch of the rubble beneath our feet, and the call of alone, ornery crow. Slava's mom was one of those Russians who moved here after the war. When she got her first paycheck, she thought that was a mistake. She was earning three times as much as she did back home in Russia. But it was no mistake. Narva, Slava said, was a good place to be Russian. Today, that's less true. Russians in Estonia are still doing better economically than Russians in Russia, but compared to their countrymen in Estonia, they're doing worse. Slava, a local official with figures to hand, says people in Narva on average earn a third less than Estonians in general. Local grievances can add up, and the Estonian government believes the Kremlin is already trying to use them to undermine the state. This is obvious, the government communications director, Ilmar Rag, told me. Russian television is hostile, he said, fabricating stories and exaggerating problems. He doesn't believe it has yet created a fifth column, eager to rise up and break away, as in Ukraine. But there are unnerving signs. He asked young people in Narva who their leader was. Their answer? Vladimir Putin. If Putin would say to this population, you should do something hostile, then no one knows what will happen, omar said. For his part, Mr. Putin throws up his hands at such talk, he told an interviewer earlier this month. Only an insane person, and only in a dream, can one imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. The Estonians are not betting on his sanity. They recently held their largest ever military exercise. And Estonia is one of the few countries to meet its NATO commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense. It's also launched a campaign to bolster what it calls the country's psychological defenses against Russian misinformation. It includes classes in schools and a new Russian language TV station with a studio in Narva. The campaign's success will be measured over years. Meanwhile, if Mr. Putin is keen on destabilising NATO, he may well find sympathy for his cause among Estonia's Russian minority.
- [17:08]
Programme Host
Neil Roselle There the Peruvians are planning to build a transcontinental railway, which they hope will enable neighbouring Brazil and much of South America to export goods to China and the rest of Asia using their sea and airports. The railway will cost billions, and the bulk of the investment is expected to come from China. But not everyone is happy about this ambitious scheme. Many wonder if it will ever leave the drawing board. Others, as Simon Parker has been learning, suggest that if it does become a reality, it might bring benefits to the capital, Lima, but it will do nothing for the rest of the country.
- [17:46]
Simon Parker
Sending post in and out of Peru often involves a notoriously cumbersome and frozen frustrating process. If even the tiniest detail is out of place, then chances are that handwritten letter or important document will annoyingly never see the light of day again. Every expatriate living here can recite tales of Christmas cards or mouldy mince pies arriving well after Easter. Peru's import and export system is less streamlined and lethargic, let's say. And ports and post offices are infamously chaotic. So imagine my incredulity and that of many other people living in this South American nation at the news of a proposed transcontinental railway that will export Brazilian goods from the border in the east through Peru to the west coast, before heading off across the Pacific to China. Ten billion dollars, that's six and a half billion pounds of Chinese investment should put the wheels in motion nicely, provided engineers can traverse that somewhat hilly section of the continent known as the Andes Mountains. The train is coming, I heard one man proclaim from within my local corner shop. We will be connected with Asia, he told me. This is huge. His thoughts are like those of most people in Lima. If the railway is completed successfully, this could be a very big deal for Peru. The cynic inside me and many others in Lima, though wearing a slightly less rose tinted style of sunglasses, wonder if Peru may have bitten off a bit more than it can chew. For example, it took four months for my mother's day card to reach the shores of England last year. That may be small fry, but the potential of letting down the world's biggest economy is a slightly bigger fish. In Lima, though, the general response to the plan is one of optimism front page news for the two principal newspapers, El Comercio and La Repubblica. And it really isn't an easy feat for a story to knock the regular road traffic accidents and football infidelities off their perch. But what makes the front page in Lima doesn't necessarily make the headlines elsewhere. And while the government in the capital starts licking its lips at the prospect of a Chinese windfall, what about the rest of the country? Well, the planned railroad will stretch over 3,500 miles from the port of Aku, 200 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro, to a yet undecided destination in Peru. Critics have already condemned the project as potentially harmful to the thousands of communities high in the Andes, and with this in mind, I left the pleasant warmth of a balmy El Nino autumn in Lima for a closer inspection in the region north of the Andean city of Cusco. The government in Lima has just always done what it wants, I was told by Antonio, a coffee farmer on the outskirts of the small town of Choque Canca, a six hour drive from Cusco. If a train cuts through the land around here, then the local people will feel no benefit whatsoever, he grumbled while chewing a cheekful of coca leaves. Lima is a country all to itself, and it's been like that for hundreds of years. The exact route of the train line is yet to be decided, but for farmers like Antonio, it's a case of a Lima centric government appearing to make Lima centric decisions. If ever there was an argument against an urbanised, civic minded administration representing the metropolitan masses, then it's certainly valid in Peru. In the nearby town of Okabamba, I met another farmer who was worried at the consequences of a train line hacking its way through ancient rural land. Renato has cultivated bananas and COCA for over 50 years in this region of the Andes. Lima had might as well be on another planet for all he and his family care. We're more Inca, more rural, while the people in Lima are much more European, he told me. We just get on with our lives here, but all the government thinks is that we're making cocaine, which is a complete myth. And among the other locals I spoke to, the sentiments were always the same, surprisingly, elsewhere in this green and hilly corner of South America. It was also the lack of opinion that startled me most. Simply Most people, it seems, didn't have a clue that discussions were even taking place. What do you think about the new train line? I asked dozens of locals in my finest but quite granted, elementary level Spanish. But instead of newsy, topical debate, I receive little more than blank expressions and the usual smirk reserved for gringos of my lofty height. The railway project isn't yet a reality, but if it gets the green light, there is no doubt that the capital's sea and airports will become busier than ever. Which makes me think that I should probably get next year's Mother's Day card in the post by the end of the week.
- [22:30]
Programme Host
Simon Parker in Peru it's nearly a year now since Israeli forces launched air and ground attacks on Gaza in response, they said, to a series of rocket attacks launched from inside the Palestinian territory. More than 2,000 people were killed in the conflict and many homes and business properties in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding started soon after. A ceasefire was announced last August, but progress has been slow. A blockade on the territory imposed by Israel has delayed the arrival of construction materials. Roger Hearing has been to see how one business has carried on despite the difficulties.
- [23:09]
Kate Ady
First time in Gaza, said the tall suited man who caught up with us as we heaved our body armour onto the motorbike trailer and began to wheel the rest along the concrete walkway towards the entry checkpoint. Ashraf Abushaban then tagged along. His holdall was full, he said, of small denomination shekel coins for his shop. He'd just been on a course in Tel Aviv about making Italian ice cream. He was in fact the owner and manager of the celebrated Kazem Ice Cafe, purveyor to Gaza for more than half a century of ice cream sundaes and slush of the most lurid colours and extravagant flavours you've ever seen. It's hard to give you a sense of of quite how odd that seems. Ice cream to me is about happy days in the sunshine, holidays, beaches and laughing children. It's above all about safe normality. There isn't a lot of that right now in Gaza, of course. There are lots and lots of children. The beaches are certainly long and golden and in fact Ashraf has just opened a new branch by the beach in Gaza City. And despite the apocalyptic destruction you do see in parts of the city from last year's war, the you do also see a lot of giggling, playing children among the ruins. And every last one of them knows about Chasms ice cream. The group of five we found sitting on a pile of rubble with small empty tubs shrieked in approval when we asked if Chasms was the place to go for such treats. They're so used to war, ashraf says. Gelato and the beach are maybe the only way to express their feelings. But of course it all costs money. Not much, a couple of shekels, about 20p for a small pot. But at the end of each month, Ashraf waits to see if the civil servants get paid by the Palestinian Authority. Business will be tight, he knows, if they don't. We got to know Ashraf a bit better in the few days we spent in Gaza. He's a quietly spoken, slim businessman with a passion for the trade he inherited from his father and many friends on both sides of the border. He proudly showed us the shiny Italian gelato machines installed in the back rooms of his cafe building when he was trying to import them. It was hard to convince the Israelis, apparently, that there wasn't some other, more threatening purpose for the tall chrome boxes with pipes and chutes and nozzles. It's likely at least some of the machines were hauled through the tunnels under the border with Egypt until that smuggling operation was closed down a few months back. Now that's a strange image. Young men in pitch darkness sweating to drag huge boxes through rickety holes in the sand, and all so that Gazans could eat fine ice cream. Ashraf has every right to be proud of the cafe that he's built above the street front shop just a couple of blocks up from the sea in Gaza City. It's a kind of 50s diner with coloured upholstery almost as garish as the ice cream he's serving, but grey and grim reality is never far away. Almost directly opposite across the road is the wreckage of an apartment block demolished by an Israeli missile last August. Took out all our windows, ashraf said. But the cafe and shop reopened within weeks of the end of the fighting. He draws some comfort from the fact that the Israelis do know who he is and what he's doing during the August war. At one point their military spokesman apparently said if Israeli troops launched a ground invasion military, they would be eating ice cream in Chasms in half an hour. And what about Hamas, the hardline Islamists who run the Gaza Strip in a place where they put up big posters discouraging young men from wearing low slung jeans? How did they take to that other staple of American influenced youth culture, a cup of multi flavoured ice slush? Very nice, said Ghazi Hamed, the deputy foreign minister for Hamas. Everyone here knows Chasms, and now so do I. The question you're asking, how good is it? Well, I of course, chose the most over the top confection I could find on Chasm's laminated menu. It was, let's say, colourful. And the ice cream was pistachio, mango and raspberry, I think. And I have to say, and this is one of the oddest things, from the decrepit heart of a half destroyed city in a besieged and blockaded enclave sometimes described as the biggest open air prison in the world, comes the best ice cream I've ever tasted.
- [27:35]
Programme Host
A long way to go for an ice cream, but it sounds like it was a good one. Roger Hearing in Gaza, bringing this edition to a close. I'm here again on Saturday Morning with more dispatches from colleagues far and wide. Do join us. Goodbye.